All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable; and so they will always be. So if you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. – Joseph Campbell

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Preliminary thoughts on the global tree die-off.

I just wanted to jot down some preliminary thoughts and points here about the plant and tree damage rapidly expanding around the world. For my own benefit as much as anybody’s. I have viewed thousands, probably tens of thousands of photos by now.

– Pine tree and palm tree damage extends around the planet. Pines are the most radiation-sensitive tree species. You might not know that palm trees grow in areas of Canada and Great Britain. This damage seems to be by something diffused around the globe.

– I want to focus first on deciduous plant damage. If you look hard enough, you can find it anywhere. But the worst anywhere is in Anne Arundel county, Maryland. That’s where I live!

– I am starting with the damage in 2012, because this is the most extensive, but this has been going on for some time.

– There are three main areas of damage (not excluding anywhere else though):
1. Louisiana and the immediate Gulf coast.
2. An arc starting around the Great Smoky mountains of Tennessee, moving northeastward along the east coast, through the east coast of Canada, crossing the Atlantic to Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, and south through western France & Portugal, and east to Denmark and Germany.
3. Northern Japan, Korea, northeasternmost China, and far eastern Russia.

– It has recently commenced in earnest on the west coast, Baja, Hawaii & Australia.

– Plant damage is worse near coal-fired power plants. It is worse in areas with high rainfall and humidity, and seems worse near seashores. Less damage is seen in 2012 drought areas. Plant damage is less in cultivated gardens and farm crops.

– The effects of plant damage from ozone, and from radiation in highly contaminated areas from Chernobyl, is remarkably similar. Both are pro-oxidant, and damage results from reactive oxygen species being formed. Both cause necrosis in leaves. Both reduce chlorophyll and carotinoids, and increase anthocyanins. Anthocyanin is a defense mechanism in the plant, is an anti-oxidant, and reduces damage from UV rays. There is less green and yellow in leaves, and more red, pink and purple. The main difference is that radiation induces mutations, fasciation, variegation, and can increase or retard growth and fruit yields.

– Ozone is formed from the reaction of UV light on hydrocarbons, PANs and VOCs. It also may be formed by the much more energetic action of gamma rays from radionuclides in air and rain.

– I am reducing the effect of the Louisiana sinkhole on this phenomenon. It seems mostly limited to the Gulf coast, though it still is a factor. The blue iodine spots in leaves is mostly radioactive iodine from Fukushima. This has been seen in Maryland, southern Ontario, Nova Scotia, Iceland, and Denmark.

– Radiation is turning ordinary air pollution and Gulf poisons in something much worse.

– Every time Tepco injects nitrogen into Fuku reactors, carbon-14 is formed. C-14 is the most dangerous nuclide for plants in the long term. Linus Pauling thought it was the most dangerous for humans, too.

– Neutron radiation from plutonium is causing C-14 to form in soils, by transmuting nitrogen via addition of thermal neutrons. You need rain and wet soil for this. If it is dry, you get tritium. Carbon-14 transmutes into nitrogen again when it decays, disrupting chemical bonds in plant sugars. This creates stress in plants that is additional to oxidative stress from ozone or PANs. C-14 has a half-life of 5,700 years. This means it will be around for 57,000 years.

– Coal-firing power plants emit hydrogen fluoride. When uranium mixes with fluoride, it forms uranium hexafluoride, an extremely toxic and corrosive substance. Some of the damage to leaves is from this substance in rain burning through leaf tissue. (Also beta radiation in high enough concentrations may do this.) Watering your garden with fluoridated water is an easy way damage your plants, if uranium is around.

– Oak leaf galls observed in Maryland were also found at a higher rate in the Chernobyl contaminated areas.

That’s it for now. I reserve the right to change my mind. I don’t see this problem going away.

38 thoughts on “Preliminary thoughts on the global tree die-off.”

The town I live in is known and named for it’s Ponderosa Pines. I have never seen such a red wasteland! Funny how my roommate (Master Gardener), and his best friend, an arborist,…can’t SEE a thing! You can take them to the bloody tree,…drive all over town counting diseased trees,…(Have not found ONE that was NOT at least a little ‘affected’),….ahhhh, but there are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see!

He found his yellow big, hunky-clunky geiger counter too,….over a month ago,….he won’t take it out of it’s box! Now, what reason (s) would someone have to not use a geiger counter? Blah, blah, blah,…I’m moving next month,…wish me luck!

Was the little nudged about the numbers being in Ca. as they are in Fuku city ? … Its accumulative just like We’ve said from day one ! …Ca. will be a nightmare state as others soon enough and look at all the vegetation it provides for the U.S. OMG !
The population, …the whole thing is mind boggling !

The whole thing is mind boggling, xdrfox! CA is getting hit now with the ocean contamination, too. Plus, norbu just got 122 CPM from his rain sample from a car swipe. Looks like the earthquakes, etc., just sent Fuku1 into even more of a frenzy again, so even more iodine coming our way. I’m happy to hear that you are moving, Jill! I am still holding the grudge against your roommate. 🙂 Want to go to South? We are planning to go at the end of the summer, if we make it that long. I find myself saying, this will be the last time that we go trick or treating in California, etc. Bobby, thank you for these “preliminary thoughts,” once again, I am so happy that you are on our side!

tell me what you know about fgasciation, please. AFAIK it is the consequence more often of radiation than of any other cause: am looking for info on this, specifically its likelihoodof being induced by hydrocarbons. thank you.

Thanks everyone,…for the GREAT support! Where? Hell I don’t know,……am looking at a place one county over, tomorrow. Things are just too unhealthy here,….and I know I’ll heal better if I’m happy. I am down to #89 again,….and I’m scared.

On the trees,…..oh God I saw something else the past two drives I took,….but even my mind wants to ‘discredit’ it, right?
The boughs, if you will, that are reddened,….well, their supporting branches are turning, or have turned jet black. They look charred,….but that is not the worst. The trees that are the reddest, with the most affected limbs,…the trunks are bowing! They are leaning out over roadways,…businesses, houses, you name it. No one sees them. They will just let them fall on them I suppose.

Vgirl,…..it would be an HONOR to be a part of YOUR family! I am touched!

I know Bobby1,…I sense it,…both the unpleasantness,…and your and majia and Noah are going to ‘nail it’. This I know. The good Lord always forewarns His people! 🙂

Yes,…I’ll bet the trees I saw again today are dying from the inside out,…just like us. Hollow! I simply MUST borrow my roommie’s digital and figure out ‘Photobucket’, or whatever! I will do it! Saw the trees again today and I thought of you all,….if you were seeing what I saw,…….oh how I wish there was a REAL open-eyed, hearted person around me! Oh well,…..I sure have a BIG family in Paradise,….the REAL ONE! 🙂 (I live in Paradise, California)

Jill, it’s the Godzilla fungus. It’s here now… it attacks the trees when they get stressed for other reasons. But it causes humans to rot from the inside too.

I now believe that this is what got me in May & June – the uranium, plutonium etc. is accumulated in the fungus. I had all the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning, but it didn’t explain the massive skin symptoms. Now I know.

Hey Nonukes, the first time I read that book I had to stop in the middle for the nightmares! It’s too awful of stuff for me to read anymore, now I am all about comedies and happy stories, but it was an interesting idea. I want to find the black grandma rockin on her chair on the porch that is expecting us all to arrive….I think she was in the middle of corn fields…

Yes, me too! Very scary. I just read The Road this spring, which returned that idea, and is brutal in its own way. I try for comedies now, too. Some I have been watching on Netflix are Louis C.K. (dark), Russell Peters (offensive), and it isn’t exactly a comedy and is politically incorrect, but on Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith makes me laugh every episode. Escapism!

I’ve read a lot about how full panic ash can be used to remove radioactive particles from people. I’ve been using it personally in bank cakes, cookies, homemade coconut ice cream,using a zeolite water filter… If I remember correctly there was volcanic eruption in Iceland in May or June of 2011. I wondered if the ash that is blown into the atmosphere would have a sort of cleansing effect taking or bindingradioactive particles with it. I mean if it did it probably wouldn’t help us, but it might help clean up some of this stuff over the next 10,000 years so that life may continue in some manner.

Thank you for this and for all the work involved. As you will know, we are having a huge problem now with Chalara die back of ash which is supposed to have come from infected trees in the UK.. This is, of course, a fungal disease. I am absolutely certain, in my own mind that this must be because of the radiation mechanism you are talking about. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/chalara gives an account of this and interestingly DOESN’T blame the Dutch nursery for all the outbreaks… Unlike the BBC, which I don’t trust one little bit. In fact they say that it was first reported in Poland in 1992.
On an empirical level, both I and someone else I was talking to are certain that there has been an increase in black mold over the last few years and not just due to weather changes.

June, yes the ash disease is fungal, but this fungus has been active for some time. This latest plant die-off is due to pollution and fungus originating from America, and is affecting all plants and trees (except for lawn grass) on the east coast of the US. It is especially bad in the area where I live. This plume of radioactivity, fungus and pollution reached the UK within the last few months, and now 97% of the winter wheat there is contaminated with fungus. This is much more than an ash tree disease, it affects everything.

Thank you. It’s not good it is it? I’m sorry, I was a bit off course because I was wondering if the same thing was happening to the Ash as a direct result of Chornobyl. It struck me that 1992 in Poland was about the right time for a fungus to have arrived there and been identified, bearing in mind that this all takes time. I expect that Ash die back is vastly under-reported in this country and I doubt we are unique in this. We are beset from all sides!

I am thinking that this substance, uranium tetrafluoride, was primarily responsible for killing my morning glories. This happened sometime in late July- early August. It rained, and by the next day, one-third of the morning glories were dead. In 3 days they were all dead. I had been watering them with fluoridated water until then, because it had been very dry.

The lower leaves of the morning glory which were under an awning, but had rain dripping on them, showed signs of direct corrosion of the leaf, where the rain burned through it. The dry leaves also showed signs of ozone damage.

Uranium tetrafluoride is extremely corrosive, as well as radioactive. Anyone who drinks fluoridated tap water contaminated with uranium is subject to having their intestines burned through by this chemical. And this goes especially for people who live near uranium mines, or are subject to depleted uranium from the US wars in the middle east.

cosmic charlie
May 6, 2014 at 5:48 am Log in to Reply
Here in the Northern Midwest, we are seeing widespread die off of evergreen trees. Red pine seem particularly hard hit. The “experts” cite climate change which is complete bs. I suspect the carbon 14 plus the atmospheric contamination by Fukushima have pushed things past the tipping point. In our area at least, this was not very apparent until this spring. I would estimate 10% of the red pine are dying or showing serious stress. Horrifying….

Dr. Goodheart
May 6, 2014 at 9:30 am Log in to Reply
Same thing on the west coast at higher elevations.. The loggers are very happy, because they get to cut down those trees and get paid for it.

The forest is thinning out as the trees die. It still looks ‘good’, because as the trees die, they take the dead ones out, but the trees no longer make a canopy. Now there are large spaces in between the trees.

The trees are not growing back to fill in those spaces.

earthsmith
May 6, 2014 at 9:57 am Log in to Reply
Yes horrifying it is. I had to take a road trip through the W.I. Dells yesterday and the evergreens are so browned out and some straight up bare. Other dead, sickly looking species of trees and shrubbery. I walked around at a rest stop and it looked like fungus…..what’s that word?…oh yeah environmental stress like radiation that deform DNA of all living things so the cells can no longer function properly. Nah, move along nothing here.